


A Shadow on the Wall

by StarlingGirl



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I once watched you make yourself a shadow on the wall. Or at least, I watched you un-make yourself a shadow on the wall. I have never seen magic like it, and nor has Norrell. I wish to know how you did it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shadow on the Wall

On a rainy night in late November, in the county of Yorkshire, a patch of sky abruptly forced itself in where it did not belong. New stars shone above the wide grey moors and the sweeping hills, and new constellations that no man left alive had names for painted themselves across the heavens. The men and women who found themselves under this new sky were mostly sleeping, and did not notice it. Those creatures generally more awake in the darkness – the foxes and the bats and the owls – did not seem to mind it.

But Childermass, who was sitting in a small and not particularly clean room in a second-rate post-inn, blinked once or twice at the page upon which he was writing, and then looked all around him, as though expecting to see something remiss.

“So,” he muttered to himself. “They are back, are they?”

He shut up his notebook and set down his pen, and turned his chair towards the door. Whatever he was waiting for, he did not seem to fear it much; his hands were clasped idly in his lap, and his dirty, booted feet were stretched out in front of him. He seemed to be languishing beside an imaginary fire, all comfort and warmth, despite the coolness of the room.

The knock, when it came, prompted a small and twisted smile to tug at one side of his face.

“You are late,” he called out, as the door opened, and Jonathan Strange stepped through it.

“I was not aware that I was expected,” Strange returned. He wore an ironical smile, the very picture of the one that Childermass had seen him smile half a hundred times before. Perhaps it was Childermass’s imagination, but there seemed to be a touch of something new about it – something a little wild.

“If you were, I suspect this meeting might have happened at a more sociable hour.”

Strange laughed. “You are awake, are you not? I made sure. And besides, you know that my circumstances are quite particular ones, and they do not lend themselves to my coming for lunch.”

“Perhaps not.”

Strange sat, without waiting to be asked.

“Where is Norrell?” Childermass inquired. The question earned only a careless wave of the hand; Strange seemed to be indicating that Norrell was elsewhere, and that more precise information was quite impossible. Childermass chose to accept the answer.

“I will be honest, John – I have come for your help.”

“My help? I am no servant anymore.” Strange smiled.

“Oh, I am quite aware. We are not so cut off as that, you know; I have been following your dealings with the York Society of Magicians for some time now. Norrell, incidentally, is rather unhappy about it.”

“I would not have imagined otherwise.”

“Still, I – or rather, I ought to say we – are in need of your help. It is this blasted darkness. We did not mind it so much at first, but it has made some of our endeavours rather… difficult.”

There was a brief silence in the room. It was the silence of a man waiting for an answer, but Childermass had only more questions.

“What? You think I might succeed where you and Norrell have failed?”

“Oh, naturally. I once watched you make yourself a shadow on the wall. Or at least, I watched you un-make yourself a shadow on the wall. I have never seen magic like it, and nor has Norrell. I wish to know how you did it. It seems to me just the sort of thing we might be able to work from.”

At first, Childermass did not seem inclined to answer. He stared intently out of the window at the new sky and the new stars, and found that they appeared to him to be a writing, just as strange and just as unfamiliar as that which marked Vinculus’s body, and which he still had not quite grasped.

“I spoke to the shadows,” he said at last, a little reluctantly. “I asked them if they might help me.”

Strange’s eyes widened in surprize. His mouth opened, and then closed itself again. He half-shook his head, as a dog might when it is trying to dry itself half-heartedly. And then, eventually, he began to laugh.

“Well, magician,” he said in amusement when his laughter had subsided. “You have quite outdone us! After all that Norrell and I have done – after I reminded the earth and the sky and the rain and the trees of all their old alliances – I had not thought to… well!” He laughed again, and Childermass’s eyes sparkled with the same amusement.

“So, it is as simple as that, is it? You will speak to the sky.”

“Perhaps not that easy,” admitted Strange. “I – we – would certainly appreciate some help.”

He stood, and as he did, Childermass noticed that Strange’s coat was of a very odd fabric – it had seemed dark blue in the candlelight, but now it seemed as though it might be dark grey, or possibly green. It reminded Childermass of the ocean during storms, and he blinked at it, confused to find his perception so muddled. Strange, it seemed, had picked up some vestige of those odd and magical lands through which he had been travelling.

Strange followed his gaze, and his hand brushed at some speck of imaginary dirt, or dust.

“Will you help me?”

He seemed to have forgotten entirely that his plea should have been on the behalf of both Norrell and himself, and when he took a step closer and looked into Childermass’s face, they might have been the only two men in the world.

“I will,” Childermass said. “I will not stay, mind. I have work to do here.”

Strange’s gaze fell upon the notebook on the small desk, on the papers littered across it. His smile upon seeing it was a little nostalgic, and he looked as though he more than half-longed for the days when he had a piece of magic to do, and he had sat at just such a desk until it was done.

“I should expect nothing else,” he said, “of the greatest magician of our age.”


End file.
